Analysis

Analysis is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts to gain a better understanding of it. The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle (384–322 B.C.), though analysis as a formal concept is a relatively recent development.

Note the inherent nature of analysis. It is a process. Therefore top notch analysis requires a formal process that fits the problem

Why this is important

A popular powerful type of analysis is a SWOT Analysis. 1 This breaks a project down into its four strategic planning areas: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Each of these is a smaller, much easier problem to solve.

The difficulty of solving a problem can be reduced by an order of magnitude or more by breaking it down into smaller appropriately selected subproblems, each of which is easier to solve. This is the ancient adage of "divide and conquer" at work.

The challenge is finding the right problem decomposition. The wrong one provides the comfortable illusion that you're making progress and will solve the problem. The right one will make that expectation come true.

If you're having difficulty solving a problem, it's probably because the wrong analysis is being used.

If you're repeatedly having trouble solving a class of problems, it's probalby because you're using the wrong problem solving process. Only one of the steps of a good overall process is analysis.

Application example

One of the most important problems ever solved yielded to a simple but novel type of analysis. Why do epidemics occur? What causes disease to spread? Before the germ theory of disease there was no good answer.

John Snow, a 17th century English physician, was a skeptic. He didn't believe in miasma theory, which held that diseases like cholera and the Black Death were due to a poisonous vapor or mist filled with particles of decomposed matter that caused illness. Instead he theorized the cause was something more tangible that could be fixed.

To prove his theory, in 1854 he analyzed a cholera outbreak in London by plotting deaths on a map of the city, as prepared for his later study and shown below:

This was a radically novel form of analysis, known today as a spot map. Given this tight concentration of deaths and their exact locations, the cause of the epidemic must be located near the center of the death cluster. There must be something there that differs from the ordinary: 2

By charting the incidence of the disease, he showed that over 500 cases occurred within 10 days over a radius of some 250 yards centered on London's Broad Street. He looked for some poison which he believed came from the excreta of cholera patients and was swallowed by the new victims. A common factor was their use of water from the Broad Street pump that had been polluted with sewage. Snow had traced the pipelines of various water companies and showed that one was infected by cholera.

By the methodical process of elimination, he proved his point: A workhouse in that area had its own private well, and there were only 5 deaths among its 535 inmates. A brewery on Broad Street likewise never used the water from the Broad Street pump, and it had no cases among its 70 workers. The solution was to remove the handle at the Broad Street pump, which elimiated the continuence of the epidemic.

Removing the pump handle was one of the most famous experiments in all of science. The deaths stopped. They were already lessening, but once people could no longer drink from the contaminated source, they could no longer catch cholera. John Snow's later study of the London cholera epidemic and his analysis became the founding event for the new field of epidemiology.

The point

A good analysis uses a formal, well refined process to drive the
analysis. A poor analysis does just the opposite: It uses an informal,
intuitive process. The former is required for difficult problems.
The latter works fine on everyday problems, which is the perfect
setup for the Intuitive
Process Trap. But to solve the London cholera epidemic problem, John Snow had to use a "methodical process of elimination."

The point is that the sustainability problem is so horrendously difficult it requires deep formal analysis to find its root causes and how to resolve them.

A formal reusable form of analysis is a process. Thwink.org has developed the System Improvement Process (SIP), for use in breaking a difficult social problem into its smaller problems. Like a SWOT analysis, SIP uses a matrix to conceptually organize what needs to be done. The basic SWOT analysis is a 2 x 2 matrix. SIP uses a 3 x 4 matrix. The 3 subproblems listed on the left are the 3 columns. The four rows are:

1. Problem Definition

2. Analysis

3. Solution Convergence

4. Implementation

If you've used SWOT or a similar process before, you will be comfortable with SIP.

Are you as concerned as we are about the rise of populust authoritarians like Donald Trump? Have you noticed that democracy is unable to solve important problems like climate change, war, and poverty? If so this film series is for you!

Why is democracy in crisis? One intermediate cause is a weakened Voter Feedback Loop. Powerful root cause forces are working to weaken the loop.

The most eye-opening article on the site since it was written in December 2005. More people have contacted us about this easy to read paper and the related Dueling Loops videos than anything else on the site.

Do you every wonder why the sustainability problem is so impossibly hard to solve? It's because of the phenomenon of change resistance. The system itself, and not just individual social agents, is strongly resisting change. Why this is so, its root causes, and several potential solutions are presented.

The analysis was performed over a seven year period from 2003 to 2010. The results are summarized in the Summary of Analysis Results, the top of which is shown below:

Click on the table for the full table and a high level discussion of analysis results.

The Universal Causal Chain

This is the solution causal chain present in all problems. Popular approaches to solving the sustainability problem see only what's obvious: the black arrows. This leads to using superficial solutions to push on low leverage points to resolve intermediate causes.

Popular solutions are superficial because they fail to see into the fundamental layer, where the complete causal chain runs to root causes. It's an easy trap to fall into because it intuitively seems that popular solutions like renewable energy and strong regulations should solve the sustainability problem. But they can't, because they don't resolve the root causes.

In the analytical approach, root cause analysis penetrates the fundamental layer to find the well hidden red arrow. Further analysis finds the blue arrow.Fundamental solution elements are then developed to create the green arrow which solves the problem. For more see Causal Chain in the glossary.

This is no different from what the ancient Romans did. It’s a strategy of divide and conquer. Subproblems like these are several orders of magnitude easier to solve because you are no longer trying (in vain) to solve them simultaneously without realizing it. This strategy has changed millions of other problems from insolvable to solvable, so it should work here too.

For example, multiplying 222 times 222 in your head is for most of us impossible. But doing it on paper, decomposing the problem into nine cases of 2 times 2 and then adding up the results, changes the problem from insolvable to solvable.

Change resistance is the tendency for a system to resist change even when a surprisingly large amount of force is applied.

Overcoming change resistance is the crux of the problem, because if the system is resisting change then none of the other subproblems are solvable. Therefore this subproblem must be solved first. Until it is solved, effort to solve the other three subproblems is largely wasted effort.

The root cause of successful change resistance appears to be effective deception in the political powerplace. Too many voters and politicians are being deceived into thinking sustainability is a low priority and need not be solved now.

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to raise general ability to detect political deception. We need to inoculate people against deceptive false memes because once people are infected by falsehoods, it’s very hard to change their minds to see the truth.

Life form improper coupling occurs when two social life forms are not working together in harmony.

In the sustainability problem, large for-profit corporations are not cooperating smoothly with people. Instead, too many corporations are dominating political decision making to their own advantage, as shown by their strenuous opposition to solving the environmental sustainability problem.

The root cause appears to be mutually exclusive goals. The goal of the corporate life form is maximization of profits, while the goal of the human life form is optimization of quality of life, for those living and their descendents. These two goals cannot be both achieved in the same system. One side will win and the other side will lose. Guess which side is losing?

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause follows easily. If the root cause is corporations have the wrong goal, then the high leverage point is to reengineer the modern corporation to have the right goal.

The world’s solution model for solving important problems like sustainability, recurring wars, recurring recessions, excessive economic inequality, and institutional poverty has drifted so far it’s unable to solve the problem.

The root cause appears to be low quality of governmental political decisions. Various steps in the decision making process are not working properly, resulting in inability to proactively solve many difficult problems.

This indicates low decision making process maturity. The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to raise the maturity of the political decision making process.

In the environmental proper coupling subproblem the world’s economic system is improperly coupled to the environment. Environmental impact from economic system growth has exceeded the capacity of the environment to recycle that impact.

This subproblem is what the world sees as the problem to solve. The analysis shows that to be a false assumption, however. The change resistance subproblem must be solved first.

The root cause appears to be high transaction costs for managing common property (like the air we breath). This means that presently there is no way to manage common property efficiently enough to do it sustainably.

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to allow new types of social agents (such as new types of corporations) to appear, in order to radically lower transaction costs.

Solutions

There must be a reason popular solutions are not working.

Given the principle that all problems arise from their root causes, the reason popular solutions are not working (after over 40 years of millions of people trying) is popular solutions do not resolve root causes.

This is Thwink.org’s most fundamental insight.

Summary of Solution Elements

Using the results of the analysis as input, 12 solutions elements were developed. Each resolves a specific root cause and thus solves one of the four subproblems, as shown below:

Click on the table for a high level discussion of the solution elements and to learn how you can hit the bullseye.

The 4 Subproblems

The solutions you are about to see differ radically from popular solutions, because each resolves a specific root cause for a single subproblem. The right subproblems were found earlier in the analysis step, which decomposed the one big Gordian Knot of a problem into The Four Subproblems of the Sustainability Problem.

Everything changes with a root cause resolution approach. You are no longer firing away at a target you can’t see. Once the analysis builds a model of the problem and finds the root causes and their high leverage points, solutions are developed to push on the leverage points.

Because each solution is aimed at resolving a specific known root cause, you can't miss. You hit the bullseye every time. It's like shooting at a target ten feet away. The bullseye is the root cause. That's why Root Cause Analysis is so fantastically powerful.

The high leverage point for overcoming change resistance is to raise general ability to detect political deception. We have to somehow make people truth literate so they can’t be fooled so easily by deceptive politicians.

This will not be easy. Overcoming change resistance is the crux of the problem and must be solved first, so it takes nine solution elements to solve this subproblem. The first is the key to it all.

B. How to Achieve Life Form Proper Coupling

In this subproblem the analysis found that two social life forms, large for-profit corporations and people, have conflicting goals. The high leverage point is correctness of goals for artificial life forms. Since the one causing the problem right now is Corporatis profitis, this means we have to reengineer the modern corporation to have the right goal.

Corporations were never designed in a comprehensive manner to serve the people. They evolved. What we have today can be called Corporation 1.0. It serves itself. What we need instead is Corporation 2.0. This life form is designed to serve people rather than itself. Its new role will be that of a trusted servant whose goal is providing the goods and services needed to optimize quality of life for people in a sustainable manner.

What’s drifted too far is the decision making model that governments use to decide what to do. It’s incapable of solving the sustainability problem.

The high leverage point is to greatly improve the maturity of the political decision making process. Like Corporation 1.0, the process was never designed. It evolved. It’s thus not quite what we want.

The solution works like this: Imagine what it would be like if politicians were rated on the quality of their decisions. They would start competing to see who could improve quality of life and the common good the most. That would lead to the most pleasant Race to the Top the world has ever seen.

Presently the world’s economic system is improperly coupled to the environment. The high leverage point is allow new types of social agents to appear to radically reduce the cost of managing the sustainability problem.

This can be done with non-profit stewardship corporations. Each steward would have the goal of sustainably managing some portion of the sustainability problem. Like the way corporations charge prices for their goods and services, stewards would charge fees for ecosystem service use. The income goes to solving the problem.

Corporations gave us the Industrial Revolution. That revolution is incomplete until stewards give us the Sustainability Revolution.

This analyzes the world’s standard political system and explains why it’s operating for the benefit of special interests instead of the common good. Several sample solutions are presented to help get you thwinking.

Note how generic most of the tools/concepts are. They apply to far more than the sustainability problem. Thus the glossary is really The Problem Solver's Guide to Difficult Social System Problems, using the sustainability problem as a running example.